How to Party with a Killer Vampire Read Free

the vampire black and bloodred helium-inflated balloons. Currently she was tying the balloons to headstones and monuments in the designated party area. Tomorrow she’d dress for the theme, in a sexy “Vampira” costume. Unlike the star of the film, Angelica, who wore a wig, Dee didn’t need fake locks. Her long black hair was perfect for the part.
    Berkeley Wong, my events videographer, had already helped Cruz’s crew with the atmospheric lighting—headstones with eerie backlights, indirect spotlights, and dozens of candles. He’d be back again tomorrow night to videotape the event.
    Duncan Grant, all-around gamer, computer whiz, fan of extreme sports, and Berk’s office roommate on Treasure Island, was busy connecting wires behind some gravestones. He’d been thrilled when Cruz had hired him and a few of his friends as movie extras. At the moment, he was hooking up the creepy-voice recordings he’d made earlier on his computer, and placing tiny speakers around the party area. At twenty, with his curly red hair, baggy skater pants, and a black T-shirt that cryptically read “Take Flight,” he still looked like a high school kid playing with electronic toys. But these were high-tech playthings. Each time someone walked past a headstone, a disembodied voice said, “I vant to suck your blood,” “What a long neck you have,” or “Bite me.”
    Everything was going to be perfect, I promised myself.
    “Those are awesome!” I called to Brad, my . . . whatever. I refused to call him “boyfriend.” The hunky crime scene cleaner, who also rents office space on the island, had generously volunteered to help out. At the moment, he was setting up Styrofoam tombstones made by the graphic artists at CeeGee Studios. Each marker had been hand painted to look cracked and crumbling, then lettered with funny epitaphs such as, “To follow you, I’m not content; how do I know which way you went?” and “Here lies a man named Zeke, second-fastest draw in Cripple Creek.”
    “As long as I don’t find my name on one of these . . . ,” Brad said, securing a fake headstone to the front of a real one with duct tape. Out of his white Crime Scene Cleaners jumpsuit and in black jeans and a black T-shirt, he looked like one of Cruz’s creative staff.
    I opened a box and began sorting through the garlic “necklaces” I’d be placing on the portable party tables that would soon be covered with red tablecloths. I’d ordered dozens of little wooden crosses and small rubber bats, which I planned to set at each place, along with plastic vampire fangs that doubled as napkin rings. But it was the centerpieces that would catch the eyes of most guests tomorrow night. I’d had minicoffins made out of Plexiglas that would be filled with red-tinted water and topped with a floating, black rose candle.
    I hummed as I worked, probably because I found the surroundings serene and relaxing. While most of the Colma cemeteries had expansive lawns, color spots of flowers, and statues of weeping angels, the grass here at Lawndale had turned brown and the flowers had long ago died. But the headstones were still intriguing, documenting lives often taken prematurely by complications of childbirth, disease epidemics, or wars. Lawndale also had a pet section up the hill called “Pet’s Place,” reserved for burying animals. Not to be confused with Stephen King’s Pet Sematary , where the pets actually came back to life after they were buried, this one was filled with tiny headstones featuring names of well-loved cats and dogs, interspersed with the occasional parakeet, gecko, or monkey.
    I suddenly sensed someone standing behind me. Half expecting it to be Brad, I turned around and came face-to-face with a grizzled old man in a frayed 49ers baseball cap, wearing dirty overalls and a plaid flannel shirt. His tattered brown boots were caked in mud, his beard caked with bits of dropped food.
    Backlit by the work lights the crew had constructed, the